Summary

We're going to wrap up our live blog coverage of the meteor over Russia today. Here's a summary of where things stand:

• A meteor or meteors streaked across the sky over Chelyabinsk, Russia on Friday morning, creating a sonic blast on par with an atomic explosion. Buildings were damaged and glass and doors were blown in. About 1,100 people sought medical treatment, according to the interior ministry, and nearly 50 were hospitalized. The event was widely documented on video.

•Meanwhile an asteroid passed unusually close to Earth, thrilling sky-watchers but posing no danger. Astronomers had been tracking the asteroid, 2012 DA14, which came within about 17,200 miles of Earth, closer than some artificial satellites. The asteroid and meteor were unrelated heavenly visitors.

•Astronomers called for better surveillance of the cosmos to identify potentially dangerous ranging objects. But it appeared no weapon could stop an asteroid on a collision course with Earth.

• The Russian Academy of Sciences says the meteor weighed 10 tons and entered the earth’s atmosphere at a speed of at least 33,000mph (54,000kph) and shattered between 18 and 32 miles above ground.

Given that space is clearly capable of pounding us with deadly rocks at any time, many today have wondered, shouldn't we be doing more to defend ourselves?Earlier Stuart Clark made the argument for improved cosmic surveillance, meaning more telescopes to find incoming debris.

But what do we do once we find the rocks? Spencer Ackerman has bad news: There's nothing we can do. No known weapons system could take these meteors out. We're basically sitting ducks ("But [space is] usually an incompetent killer, so don’t freak out," Ackerman writes):

All the advanced air defenses that humanity has invested in? The interceptor missile that are (sometimes) able to stop an adversary missile from impacting? The early-warning monitoring systems that are supposed to give humanity enough time to plan a response? They are useless, useless against a meteorite onslaught. Do not believe the stories about the Russians shooting the cosmic rock down.

“The reason, simply put, is physics,” explains Brian Weeden of the Secure Earth Foundation, a former captain and missile expert in the U.S. Air Force Space Command. Asteroids orbit the sun like Earth does, and occasionally our orbits intersect, causing the rocks to enter the atmosphere as flaming meteors screaming toward impact. They are not flying like airplanes and missiles that air defenses target. Shooting them will not change their speed or trajectory — at best, a missile impact might change its direction somewhat or shatter it into more pieces.

The Guardian's Warren Murray picks up on the questions we raised earlier about the minutes-long time lapse between when the meteor was first sighted and when the first of a series of booms was heard.

It simply took the sound waves that long to travel the distance to the observer, he writes. And the series of booms is attributable to multiple shock waves created by the meteor(s):

In our coverage we've remarked on the fact that the sonic boom in some videos happens a couple of minutes after the meteor passes.

This isn't surprising, it just means the camera was at sufficient distance that the sound took a while to reach it. Sound travels at 330m/s, so a three-second delay would mean you're a kilometre away roughly. A 30-second delay, roughly 10km etc. And the thing would have been visible to people and cameras from a long, long way away, even though the size and brightness would have made it seem quite close for many people who were in fact a long way off.

Also, a sonic boom doesn't happen at any particular instant or point in time, i.e. when the object first entered the atmosphere or first broke the sound barrier. The shockwave and the boom follows the object along its entire path as long as it's supersonic, so anyone it goes past will hear a boom. That's one reason why international agreement was never reached for the Concorde to fly supersonic across whole continents or populated areas - it would have created huge noise pollution all the way along its supersonic path.

Then there's the multiple sonic booms issue. Put simply, a body going supersonic creates multiple shock waves and therefore can make multiple booms: one in front, one behind, plus others potentially. This partly depends on its shape, changes in trajectory etc. The space shuttle was always known for two booms. Also, consider how very loud those booms in Russia would have been, and the fact that echoes off the sides of mountains etc would have in turn travelled a very long way and been heard some time afterwards.

For Elif Batuman, the meteor over Russia recalled a passage from War and Peace, in which Tolstoy describes the great comet of 1812, aka the great comet of 2011:

Only looking up at the sky did Pierre cease to feel how sordid and humiliating were all mundane things compared with the heights to which his soul had just been raised…. Above the Prechistenka Boulevard, surrounded … on all sides by stars but distinguished from them all by its nearness to the earth, its white light, and its long uplifted tail, shone the enormous and brilliant comet of 1812—the comet which was said to portend all kinds of woes and the end of the world. In Pierre, however, that comet with its long luminous tail aroused no feeling of fear. On the contrary he gazed joyfully, his eyes moist with tears, at this bright comet which, having traveled in its orbit with inconceivable velocity through immeasurable space, seemed suddenly—like an arrow piercing the earth—to remain fixed in a chosen spot, vigorously holding its tail erect, shining and displaying its white light amid countless other scintillating stars. It seemed to Pierre that this comet fully responded to what was passing in his own softened and uplifted soul, now blossoming into a new life.

2012 DA14 has passed the point of nearest proximity and is moving away from Earth again, the AP reports from Cape Canaveral, Florida:

The world is safe at least from one asteroid. A 150-foot (46-meter) cosmic rock hurtled safely past Earth on Friday. It was the closest known flyby for a rock of its size, passing within 17,000 miles (27,357 kilometers). That's closer than some satellites.

The meteor is only the latest wild event to be captured by Russian dash cams. Herewith a roundup of other highlights:

Car dashboard mounted cameras, known as 'dash-cams', record a multitude of near misses on Russian roads. Russians use the cameras to gather evidence in support of their insurance claims, where bad roads, extreme weather, drink driving and aggressive drivers produce a high accident rate. Russia had 35,972 traffic-related deaths in 2009, according to the World Health Organisation (n.b.: no humans, or cows, were harmed in the making of this video).

Walt Whitman, Frederic Church and the meteor procession of 1860

Until a eureka moment 13 years ago, astronomers puzzled over the precise nature of a celestial event described by Walt Whitman in his poem "Year of Meteors (1859-60)."

The poem is a kind of recap of the year in question. Whitman allows himself to dwell on the visit of Prince Albert Edward to New York ("And you would I sing, fair stripling! welcome to you from me, sweet boy of England! ...I know not why, but I loved you...")

Then the poem mentions a "strange huge meteor procession, dazzling and clear, shooting over our heads":

Nor the comet that came unannounced out of the north, flaring in heaven;

(A moment, a moment long, it sail’d its balls of unearthly light over our heads,

Then departed, dropt in the night, and was gone;)

In time the celestial event Whitman referred to was forgotten, and astronomers, lacking Russian daschcam footage, began wondering just what he had seen. An 1859 "daylight fireball" and the 1833 Leonid meteor shower were contenders, the LA Times reported.

Then, in 2000, astronomer Don Olson was looking at an art book and saw this painting by Frederic Edwin Church. It's called The Meteor of 1860:

Frederic Edwin Church, "The Meteor of 1860."

Olson realized that here was the event to which Whitman was referring. He drew together a team of astronomers and a literary scholar from Texas State University, and in 2010 they published their results in Sky and Telescope magazine.

The astronomer recognized this as an extremely rare event that is in fact called a "meteor procession," in which a meteor breaks up and the pieces travel together as if in formation before exiting the Earth's atmosphere once more.

A procession is rare, Olson said, because so many factors need to fall into place. The meteor, known as a grazer, must travel almost tangent to the Earth's surface, giving it a long, near-horizontal path across the skies. It usually has to travel between about 35 and 40 miles above the ground — any higher and it would not light up, any lower and it would likely fall to Earth. And it has to break up very soon after entering the Earth's atmosphere, or the procession-like effect will be lost.

The Russian interior ministry now says about 1,100 sought care after the meteor blast, the AP reports:

The shock wave blew in an estimated 100,000 square meters (more than 1 million square feet) of glass, according to city officials, who said 3,000 buildings in the city were damaged. At one zinc factory, part of the roof collapsed.

The Interior Ministry said about 1,100 people sought medical care after the shock wave and 48 of them were hospitalized. Most of the injuries were caused by flying glass, officials said...

"I went to see what that flash in the sky was about," recalled resident Marat Lobkovsky. "And then the window glass shattered, bouncing back on me. My beard was cut open, but not deep. They patched me up. It's OK now."

The first Soviet atomic weapons were manufactured near Chelyabinsk, and the region is badly contaminated from nuclear waste. The Washington Post's Max Fisher points to a 2007 Time report:

Chelyabinsk isn’t far from the massive Mayak nuclear complex, which processed materials for the first Soviet atomic weapons. During the 1940s and ’50s, Mayak pumped nuclear waste directly into the rivers that ran through villages in the area, exposing hundreds of thousands to dangerous levels of radiation. Though dumping has been since halted, many of the region’s waterways remain at least faintly radioactive, and residents still suffer from elevated cancer rates.

But in a strange juxtaposition, the region is also a frolicking ground for new money:

That sentiment seems to be shared by many of the region's nouveaux riches, who have flocked to build summer mansions along the region's lakes. Indeed, with basic infrastructure failing to even come close to keeping pace with development, the garbage produced by the holiday-makers may pose more of a threat to the environment than does the Mayak nuclear waste.

The meteor that appeared over Russia this morning described a vector perpendicular to that of the asteroid flying by Earth later today. The Telegraph has an elegant graphic illustrating the paths of the meteor and the asteroid.

For readers in Australia, Asia, Africa and Europe, the BBC has produced a video explaining how you can see the asteroid in the evening sky.

Readers in the Americas will have to wait for video, of which no shortage is expected.

The meteor explosion released as much energy as a nuclear blast, Nature magazine reports – a blast much larger than North Korea's recent test:

Infrasound data collected by a network designed to watch for nuclear weapons testing suggests that today's blast released hundreds of kilotonnes of energy. That would make it far more powerful than the nuclear weapon tested by North Korea just days ago and the largest rock crashing on the planet since a meteor broke up over Siberia's Tunguska river in 1908.

"It was a very, very powerful event," says Margaret Campbell-Brown, an astronomer at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, who has studied data from two infrasound stations near the impact site. Her calculations show that the meteoroid was approximately 15 metres across when it entered the atmosphere, and put its mass at around 40 tonnes. "That would make it the biggest object recorded to hit the Earth since Tunguska," she says.

In terms of human casualties, Friday's meteorite strike is the worst ever reported, Stuart Clark writes on his Across the Universe blog:

Before this there were only stories of a dog being killed in Egypt by a meteorite in 1911 and a boy being hit, but not seriously injured, by one in Uganda in 1992....

Until Friday morning, astronomers had thought the asteroid most likely to hit Earth was one called 2007 VK184. It is about 130 metres across and has a slim 1 in 2,000 chance of hitting Earth some time between 2048 and 2057. A danger that is thought will disappear with better tracking of its orbit.

Clark says better asteroid vigilance is needed:

Friday's unexpected strike highlights the need for better searches for dangerous asteroids, and a global strategy to deal with any that are seen.

Minutes passed between sighting and loud boom

Another video is below of the meteor's giant double contrail and an explosion, at around 25 seconds in, which then is followed by smaller unidentified pops. (Watch to the end to see the rather unbothered reaction of the locals, dressed for winter.)

How long after the meteor entered the atmosphere did the sonic boom happen? The video below makes it clear that there was some gap between when the meteor crossed the sky and when the explosion is heard.

And in this video, the meteor crosses the sky a full 2 minutes and 20 seconds before the explosion is heard (the video also captures what seems to be the unidentified popping afterwards).

Here's how Tim O'Brien, associate director of the University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Observatory, described the boom and the time gap (we quoted O'Brien in a post earlier today):

This reasonably large chunk of rock was moving faster than the speed of sound, maybe 20,000 miles per hour. It made a sonic boom in the atmosphere, and that hit buildings and shattered windows. That is what seems to have caused the injuries.

It's a completely abnormal experience. This thing appeared in the distance, raced over the horizon and was followed up 30 seconds or a minute later by a huge boom as the shock wave hit the ground. I can imagine that would be very frightening.

In fact the boom happened for some witnesses more than two minutes after the meteor came visible, and smaller pops followed the boom.

About that asteroid: It has nothing to do with this morning's meteor over Russia, the European Space Agency explains.

Astronomers have been closely observing the asteroid, which is on track to make an unusually close pass to the Earth this afternoon, coming within about 17,200 miles, which is closer than some satellites. The Associated Press has more:

Space rock 2012 DA14 is only 50 metres across. It will pass the Earth on Friday evening (UK time) just 17,100 miles above our heads. There is no danger of a collision. Nevertheless, this is closer to the Earth than many artificial satellites.

It will pass from the southern to northern hemisphere and set the record for the closest pass of any known asteroid since systematic surveys of the sky began in the mid-1990s.

The meteorite that helped finish the dinosaurs struck in Mexico, but humanity has been slow to accept, as Thomas Jefferson put it, that "stones could fall from heaven."

Like all random events and misfortunes, the Guardian's Roz Kaveney writes, we want these things to mean something, and they just might not:

But now we are aware that our planet sits in far from empty space, with heavenly billiard balls perpetually about to carom off it. ...

The trouble with wanting random events to acquire significance by afflicting unpleasant, otherwise untouchable powerful figures is that everyone does it. The religious right, Christian and Islamic, are fond of regarding tsunamis and hurricanes as instruments of wrath – Pat Robertson came up with a particularly unpleasant version of this when he attributed Haiti's problems to divine punishment for an alleged satanic pact made by that country's successful slave revolution. Nor is this confined to the religious right; rightwing sci-fi writers Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, in their 1977 novel of a comet's impending collision with Earth, have a character who survives the impact say that the good thing about the calamity was that women's lib was over. Heavenly vengeance is really an idea that has no place on the left.

These impact zones show where scientists have found meteorites, or the impact craters of meteorites, some dating back thousands of years. Not mapped are those places where meteorites may have fallen but not been discovered.

The New Yorker writer @DavidGrann points to an AFP report linking today's sky event with the historic Tunguska Event of June 1908, which caused a seismic wave and lighted the sky above Siberia for several days:

The Tunguska Event was an explosion that went off in a remote region in Siberia on June 30, 1908, near the river Podkamennaya Tunguska in the north of current Krasnoyarsk region.

Most scientists believe it was caused by a massive meteorite, an asteroid or even a comet although the failure to find fragments from the impact created a mystery that has spawned sometimes endless theories.

The few people closest to the supposed impact area of the Tunguska meteorite were the indigenous Evenki hunters.

Assuming the crater was caused by an impact from space, the body estimated as being of up 70 metres in diameter caused a seismic wave and lit the sky above Siberia for several days.

The sound of its impact was heard about a thousand kilometres away and the overall effect knocked people and livestock off their feet.

However, some theories suggest that there was in fact no rock, because no fragments of it were ever found. One of such theories looks at the possible escape of methane gas from the ground.

Summary

Here's a summary of where things stand:

• A meteor or meteors entered the atmosphere over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk early Friday and exploded in the sky, generating a shock wave that injured an estimated 950 people and damaged buildings. Itar-Nass news agency also reported damage in the nearby town of Cherbakul, where the military said a 20ft (6m) wide crater was found. Chelyabinsk is a city of about 1.1m people situated about 1,100 miles east of Moscow.

•The unusual event was captured in many videos shot from cars and surveillance cameras. Videos show a blinding brightness, a dazzling object moving with astonishing speed and a long contrail. The Russian Academy of Sciences says the meteor weighed 10 tons and entered the earth’s atmosphere at a speed of at least 33,000mph (54,000kph) and shattered between 18 and 32 miles above ground.

•The shockwave from the explosion when the meteor entered the earth's atmosphere smashed windows, buckled shop fronts, set off car alarms and took out mobile phone signals. A wall was damaged at the Chelyabinsk Zinc Plant but there was no environmental threat, a plant spokeswoman said.

•The European Space Agency has ruled out a link to the asteroid passing by earth tonight.

The Associated Press has a statement on the meteor from the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The academy says the meteor weighed 10 tons and entered the earth’s atmosphere at a speed of at least 33,000mph (54,000kph) and shattered between 18 and 32 miles above ground (30 to 50km).

The Itar-Tass news agency reports that some fragments fell into a reservoir outside the town of Cherbakul, quoting the regional governor’s office. The agency also cited military spokesman Yarslav Roshupkin as saying that a 20ft (6m) wide crater was found in the same area.

Donald Yeomans of the US Near Earth Object Programme in California said:

If the reports of ground damage can be verified, it might suggest an object whose original size was several metres in extent before entering the atmosphere, fragmenting and exploding due to the unequal pressure on the leading side vs. the trailing side (it pancaked and exploded). It is far too early to provide estimates of the energy released or provide a reliable estimate of the original size.

The European Space Agency has ruled out a link to the asteroid passing by earth tonight.

Dmitry Rogozin, the Russian deputy prime minister, said neither Moscow nor Washington had the power to shoot such objects down as they approached. "At the moment, neither we nor the Americans have such technologies" to shoot down meteors or asteroids, he said, according to the Interfax news agency.

I’ve just been speaking to Mark Ford of the British and Irish Meteorite Society. I asked him about the damage to the Chelyabinsk Zinc Plant (see earlier) and whether it was likely that some part of the meteorites had hit the plant. Ford said:

Certainly the window damage I’ve seen looks to be from the shockwave. It’s very instantaneous and I’ve seen lots of windows go at once. So I don’t think they’re actual rocks hitting the windows.

But the zinc plant’s more interesting. That looks like a large area. I don’t know whether it was secondary damage. I don’t know whether something caused something else to explode, like a gas tank or something like that. It’s an awful lot of damage. Without seeing more, it’s difficult to say. I don’t think you’re going to find a large rock in the middle of it.

A zinc plant in Chelyabinsk, Russia, which was damaged after meteorites streaked through the sky this morning. Photograph: Itar-Tass/Barcroft Media

I also asked Ford about whether this was a connection to tonight’s asteroid.

If I had to bet, I would say it’s not related. But it’s not unheard of for asteroids to have companion bodies with them. The problem you’ve got is it’s actually 12 hours between this impact and the [asteroid] tonight that’s going to actually come close to the earth, and that’s an awful lot of distance in terms of space … It makes the stream very wide. I would say it’s more likely that they’re unrelated than related.

I’m getting some criticism on Twitter for calling them meteorites rather than meteors.

Meteors are the streak of light that you say when an object, anything from a grain of dust to a large rock, travels through the atmosphere.

And a meteorite is a rock that you find on the ground. Meteoroids are usually applied when they’re in space.

So if they have hit the ground, they are meteorites. The damage to the zinc plant suggests they might have, but we don’t know that yet, so I am going to switch to using the term meteor until we can confirm that.

I suggested earlier that fireballs from the meteorites may have caused some of the damage to buildings that has injured people, many due to broken glass.

But it seems that most of that damage was caused by the shockwave from the explosion when the meteorites entered the earth's atmosphere.

Tim O'Brien, associate director of the University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Observatory, said:

This reasonably large chunk of rock was moving faster than the speed of sound, maybe 20,000 miles per hour. It made a sonic boom in the atmosphere, and that hit buildings and shattered windows. That is what seems to have caused the injuries.

It's a completely abnormal experience. This thing appeared in the distance, raced over the horizon and was followed up 30 seconds or a minute later by a huge boom as the shock wave hit the ground. I can imagine that would be very frightening.

However, the damage to the roof of the Chelyabinsk Zinc Plant (see earlier) seems inconsistent with a shockwave. I just spoke to Dr Stephen Lowry, planetary scientist at the University of Kent, who said: "It is possible for some fragments to have survived. Larger chunks can make it to the surface [of the earth]. Smaller bits can survive, perhaps bits more dense than others, or buried very deep within the object."

Dr Lowry explained what we are seeing in videos showing objects streaking across the sky, followed a minute or so later by an explosion.

This was probably 10 to 20 metres in diameter, roughly. As the meteor comes in through the atmosphere, it gets heated up, basically by friction, pressure builds up. It has a lot kinetic energy. So there's a lot of energy dissipated at some point, as it gets closer to the surface of the earth.

And then at some point they can disrupt, producing shockwaves, so it's the shockwaves that have emanated at some point just above the earth's surface. I don't think that this one actually made it to the surface of the earth. This one exploded just above the earth, which is quite a common phenomenon.

Was there any connection between the meteorites and the asteroid due to pass earth this evening?

Certainly when I read about this this morning I couldn't help but try to make a connection to this. But when you look a bit closer, bear in mind that 2012 DA14 [the asteroid] actually approached the vicinity of earth from the south. Now this [the meteorites] struck Russia, which of course is in the northern hemisphere, so it is extremely unlikely to be able to connect the two things.

But I would be very curious to see what the original trajectory of this meteor was. Just to see precisely where it came from. But I do stress at this stage, I want to be cautious and say there is no connection at this point.

Professor Ian Crawford of Birkbeck University was just interviewed about the meteorites on Sky News.

He said it was too early to tell if this incident was connected to the asteroid passing by the earth tonight.

He pointed out that if these meteorites were travelling with the asteroid, they would be many hours ahead of it.

But he said there was so much video footage coming out of Russia that it would be "possible to reconstruct the orbit" and work out if the meteorite and asteroid 2012 DA14 were connected. But, he concluded: "Probably not."

It is not meteors falling, it's the Americans testing a new weapon. [Secretary of state John] Kerry warned [foreign minister Sergei] Lavrov on Monday ... that there would be such a provocation and that it might affect Russia.

Is it connected to the flyby? A lot of folks would say “no”. Personally, I’ve always kind of liked the idea that there are streams of asteroid debris – so you can have smaller stuff that precede and trail a bigger object. It seems like an awful big coincidence if it’s not connected.

But Simon O’Toole, an astronomer at the Australian Astronomical Observatory, said he was “not so sure”.

He added that there was no confirmation that the meteorites had exploded: “so far the confirmed damage was almost certainly caused by a shock wave as the object broke the sound barrier”, he said, adding:

If this was a meteor entering the atmosphere, it’s a stark reminder of how vulnerable we are and why we need to monitor the skies very closely for potentially larger objects.

Why are there so many videos from people's cars?

Anyone who has ever seen one of those YouTube video compilations of terrifyingly dangerous Russian drivers will know that every Russian driver seems to have a camera mounted on his or her dashboard. But why?

In Russia, everyone should have a camera on their dashboard. It’s better than keeping a lead pipe under your seat for protection (but you might still want that lead pipe) ...

Psychopaths are abundant on Russian roads. You best not cut anyone off or undertake some other type of maneuver that might inconvenience the 200-pound, six-foot-five brawling children you see on YouTube hopping out of their SUVs with their dukes up ... These fights happen all the time and you can’t really press charges. Point to your broken nose or smashed windows all you want. The Russian courts don’t like verbal claims. They do, however, like to send people to jail for battery and property destruction if there’s definite video proof ...

Dash-cam footage is the only real way to substantiate your claims in the court of law. Forget witnesses. Hit and runs are very common and insurance companies notoriously specialize in denying claims. Two-way insurance coverage is very expensive and almost completely unavailable for vehicles over ten years old–the drivers can only get basic liability.

She adds that there are moments of humanity among the crashes, but basically "aside from the kindness of strangers, it’s just you and that little gadget versus the hell that is the other people on the road".

What caused the explosion?

Authorities in Chelyabinsk said the blast (which you can hear clearly on this video) had been heard at an altitude of 10,000 metres (32,800ft), suggesting it occurred when the meteor or meteors entered the earth’s atmosphere.

As the meteorites shot across the sky, they sent fireballs crashing to earth. The shockwave from the explosion when the meteor entered the earth's atmosphere smashed windows, injuring 400 people, three of them seriously, buckled shop fronts, set off car alarms and affecting mobile phone signals. A wall was damaged at the Chelyabinsk Zinc Plant but there was no environmental threat, a plant spokeswoman said.

Reader Stuart Forbes sends this video, which shows the meteorites streaking across the sky at 4min 40sec and the sound of the explosion and shockwave at 7min.

Residents in Chelyabinsk heard the explosion at about 9.20am local time (5.20am GMT), saw a bright light and felt a shockwave, according to Reuters.

Viktor Prokofiev, 36, a resident of Yekaterinburg in the Urals Mountains, said:

I was driving to work, it was quite dark, but it suddenly became as bright as if it was day. I felt like I was blinded by headlights.

Andrei, a resident of Chelyabinsk, told Reuters:

I was standing at a bus stop, seeing off my girlfriend. Then there was a flash and I saw a trail of smoke across the sky and felt a shockwave that smashed windows.

Good morning. A meteor streaked across the sky above the Ural Mountains in Russia this morning, injuring more than 400 people, many hurt by broken glass, and causing explosions.

Fragments of the meteor fell in a thinly populated area of the Chelyabinsk region, the Russian Emergency Ministry said in a statement.

Reports conflicted on what exactly happened in the clear skies. A spokeswoman for the Emergency Ministry, Irina Rossius, told the Associated Press that there was a meteor shower, but another ministry spokeswoman, Elena Smirnikh, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying it was a single meteor.